Ronald Reagan in This Fight Is Our Fight, by Elizabeth Warren

On Corporations: OpEd: Deregulation became a conservative mantra

Reagan swept into office under the banner of free-market economics. Step one was to fire the cops on Wall Street. The Reagan administration proudly embraced the idea of `deregulation, as if financial and corporate regulations were the biggest problems faced by Americans--rather than the wrongs those regulations were designed to prevent. From Reagan's perspective, it was far more important to protect a corporate giant from the government than it was to protect a customer, investor, or small competitor from the actions of a corporate giant. Regulation became the new enemy. Forget exploding gas tanks, cancer-causing chemicals in the water supply, or drugs that caused birth defects--regulation was proclaimed to be the real danger in America. From the 1980s onward, "deregulation" became a scared tenet of all conservatives, a mantra that can be translated to mean: let corporate American do more of whatever corporate America wants to do. Source: This Fight is Our Fight, by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, p. 78-9 Apr 18, 2017

On Homeland Security: OpEd: Promised to shrink government, but DoD grew by 34%

Starting in 1986, with a strong push from Ronald Reagan, Republicans made a big show of demanding that loyalists sign a "no new taxes" pledge. The goal of tax cuts was to shrink government. And that's what began to happen--well, sort of.

Under Reagan the military didn't shrink. In fact, defense spending rose by 34 percent during Reagan's presidency. And spending that was already guaranteed by law, like Social Security and Medicare, remained out of the Republicans' reach. But all other spending that Congress had to approve year after year was now on the chopping block. All the spending on education, on infrastructure, and on research.

The trickle-down policies of the Reagan years shifted American' priorities. At the same time that military spending expanded significantly, school funding was slashed by 15 percent. More bombs and fewer text books.

Source: This Fight is Our Fight, by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, p.118 Apr 18, 2017

The above quotations are from This Fight Is Our Fight The Battle to Save America's Middle Class by Elizabeth Warren. Click here for other excerpts from This Fight Is Our Fight The Battle to Save America's Middle Class by Elizabeth Warren. Click here for other excerpts by Ronald Reagan. Click here for a profile of Ronald Reagan.
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